At 'The London Confrence' there was also discussion about 'Clexit' - like Brexit but a 'Climate Exit' - a new initiative by Viv Forbes - read about it here. I drew some cartoon notes along with those below but thought it was worth its own post.

You might have read about 'The London Conference on Climate Change: Science and Geoethics' organised by Nils-Axel Mörner. It was two days of scientific presentations and discussions. I managed to be there for around half of the talks, which were fascinating although sometimes quite technical, and drew some cartoon notes...

It might not look like it has been a busy summer but I've been beavering away on a follow up to the Subisdy Sam story produced earlier in the year. Today we are launching 'Tiny the Turbine' written by Lyndsey Ward and illustrated by me.

Lyndsey writes:

Tiny the Turbine is a story that really is for children. Following Subsidy Sam’s release it was clear that there was a need for something that would help children understand the negative impacts of large scale wind developments. Happily Josh agreed and we have worked together to produce this second story specifically for children. Subsidy Sam is a dark tale but Tiny the Turbine is a moral and uplifting story and shows that it is possible to succeed in fighting against the bad things in life no matter how daunting it may seem.

If you head over to this page on the Cartoons by Josh website you can download the story and, if you haven't yet, donate something - all funds greatly appreciated - please share on social media and generally spread the word - that would also be greatly appreciated!

There is a commonly shared neo-colonialist expression: The Europeans have the watches; the Africans have the time. Today, the European Green Party, with the support of countless environmentalist NGOs, proposed an initiative in the European Parliament to make Africa wait for at least another generation to be able to lift itself out of poverty.

It's a shocking read and ends:

A sad day for Africa

Today, in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, MEPs voted “overwhelmingly” by 577 MEPs, with only 24 against and 69 abstentions to accept the Green Party’s Heubuch Report and demand that the European Union stop funding the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. It is with great hope that the world ignores this unfortunate act, considering it as a narrow-minded gesture towards appeasing a backward looking European green constituency.

In 2015, after 30 years of residence in the Brussels area, I became a Belgian citizen. Today, for the first time since officially becoming a European, I was ashamed of what ill-guided people in the European Parliament had done in the name of Europe. This act of selfish science denialism (with the potential for massive negative consequences) is no way for reasonable Europeans to act.

We need to let Africa have the chance to develop, not on our terms or demands, but on theirs. It is time to give Africans the watch and let them manage their affairs on their time, not ours.

Shame on Maria Heubuch and her band of eco-religious missionary zealots.

I have temporarily put on the Internet a scanned copy of the decision of the Upper Tribunal to refuse my appeal in regard to my request to the University of Cambridge. I have also posted my oral arguments to that Tribunal. Naturally I entirely disagree with this decision as well as the First Tier Tribunal refusal in regard to the ZODs held by the Met Office, which was discussed at CLB. The Upper Tribunal refused me permission to appeal it. Taken together these two decisions largely if not wholly exempt climate change information from the EIR.

I am not inclined to pursue either judgement and shall leave it to readers to make their own judgment as to why the climate scientists involved in these two cases do not want to disclose the environmental information they hold.

A couple of weeks back, New Scientist published an article trying to up the ante on climate sensitivity.

One headline-making 2013 study had concluded that the immediate warming that would result froma doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would be around 1.3°C - significantly less than most previous estimates. But this was before global temperatures shot past 1°C above pre-industrial levels last year, as predicted by New Scientist in July 2015. If the 2013 study was repeated using that value, it would give an estimate for the immediate warming of 1.6°C, says Piers Forster...

It also claimed that Forster and Lewis's 2013 paper had got its estimates of aerosol forcing wrong:

[Other studies] suggested that Forster's team underestimated how much warming has been masked by the cooling effect of other pollutants, such as sulphur aerosols, that we pump out alongside CO2.

Quite why anyone would want to estimate TCR from a single year's temperature figure is anyone's guess. This observation prompted Nic Lewis to write a letter to the editor, which, needless to say, has not been published. So you can read it here.

Letter to the Editor concerning New Scientist article in the 28 May 2016 issue, Vol 230, No 3075, page 8: 'Earth's sensitive side'

The claim in your 28 May article 'Earth's sensitive side' that the strong warming over the last few years means we can now rule out low estimates of climate sensitivity is wrong. You quote Piers Forster, a co-author (along with myself) of one 2013 study that concluded near-term warming from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would only be around 1.3°C. I have also been sole or lead author of three different studies published since then, all of which support that conclusion. One of those studies used the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014 assessment report's estimates for the effects on the Earth's radiation balance of both warming agents such as CO2 and of cooling agents such as sulphur aerosols. I have extended these estimates to 2015 and recomputed the warming from a doubling of CO2. It is unchanged at 1.3 °C, averaging over 1995-2015 data. It remains 1.3 °C when using data just for the last ten, or five, years. Use of a shorter period gives a less reliable estimate; using a single year's temperature is unsound.

The suggestion that the team Forster and I were part of underestimated how much warming had been masked by the cooling effects of sulphur aerosols and other pollutants is mistaken. Our team's method is unaffected by the arguments on this point raised by the Shindell and Schmidt team studies referred to. The latter study anyway contained several errors. The corrected version fixed two of the errors I had pointed out, and shows that near term warming from a doubling of CO2 is correctly estimated from the historical mix of warming and cooling agents, including sulphur aerosols. Moreover, the findings by the Storelvmo team relied on a relationship existing between solar radiation at the surface and sulphur emissions, but over their full data period that relationship is statistically insignificant. Furthermore, two recent studies (Stevens 2015 and Kirkby et al. 2016) conclude that sulphur aerosols have had less effect on radiation than previously thought, implying that estimates of the warming from a doubling of CO2 are actually too high.